Despite all our big kingdoms and all that, Lavato is still a world filled with things no one has any clue about.

My job is to research these specialized topics, like Dragons and what not.

My name is Crow Ohbel, assistant scribe to the Kingdom of Folrart.

My master ran off saying, "I must take up a temporary residence in the Duchy of Crest to adequately research the documents recently uncovered there. Until I return, I'm putting you in charge of my periodic essays."

He can't tell me these things all of a sudden. I have plans too, you know.

I guess it's not worth complaining about, so let me just get into the point of the essay right away.

Hey, I'm a busy guy with things to do, you know.

Anyway, I’ll be writing about Magic Dolls.

Magic Dolls are an elaborate form of golem that become popular among the wealthy shortly before the start of the War of the Sun and Moon.

Golems are made out of inorganic matter…such as rock, iron, wood and other materials that don't have a soul. Wizards use magic spells to imbue permanent animation on their constructs, and then the golems can take commands and complete simple tasks. More advanced ones can even operate autonomously from their creator with some success.

Before the Magic Dolls became popular, there were only bulky statues made out of rock or scary looking metal jaguars around.

But then a single gifted alchemist appears and blows away the whole history of golems with her creations.

That gifted one was female alchemist Sumer, who was called the Doll Master for obvious reasons.

We have our own names for them now, but back then all her creations were just known as Magic Dolls. As for what trick Sumer used to make them better than golems… well, there are rumors but no one knows for sure. We do know that Magic Dolls were a whole new level of golem when it came to thinking and decision making and acting autonomously. Anyone who's ever spent any time with a Magic Doll knows there's something about them that makes them almost seem... human. It's kinda creepy.

The Alchemist who Created the Magic Dolls

From the beginning Magic Dolls were subdivided into different types, depending on what their purpose was.

Sumer did not seem to be after power by developing her elaborate golems, she released them as simple products to be sold all over the world.

These Magic Doll golems were all made for serving around the house and similar jobs, except for one type known as Combat Magic Dolls.

Some of the wealthy wanted the Magic Dolls for their own purposes and paid extremely high prices for them.

In no time, Sumer was amassing large sums of money on her own.

Her most famous patron was Lady Belfyna, a noblewoman from Crest who placed a large order for Combat Magic Dolls to make an army for the War of the Sun and Moon.

Normally, if an unaffiliated wizard received such an order, they would never accept the job. The political trouble of supplying a single noble with the military power of a kingdom wouldn't be worth the trouble.

But this woman named Sumer produced the Combat Magic Dolls without a second thought, and delivered them right to Belfyna's door.

Sumer didn't even catch any political heat for it, but that's more a lesson in Duchy history so I'll leave the details to my master.

In short, Sumer designed a number of new varieties of Magic Dolls for use in total warfare.

No one questioned her, but that probably is because she had connections of the villainous sort with those who were ranked above Belfyna, like Annarose and maybe even the infamous Elgandi.

If that's true, then I figure there's no question that the Magic Dolls were planned from the very beginning to be tools for spreading war all across the lands of Lavato.

Okay, that's enough about Sumer. My job is to research things like Magic Dolls, not historical persons.

There actually weren't any specific Dolls called Combat Magic Dolls at the time. So, let me go over some of the categories that did exist.

Magic Dolls Types

First off we have the most basic, general purpose Magic Dolls. These Magic Dolls were everywhere, and most of the domestic types were based off of them.

When they're equipped with their fighting arm, they are generally referred to as generic Combat Magic Dolls.

These Magic Dolls are still used for self-defense purposes and they are highly regarded for their versatility and thinking abilities. The right hand is a attachment and you can change them out to switch from attack mode to normal mode, so it's really convenient.

Those claws are pretty nasty, too. Even with a standard power Magic Doll body, they're so sharp the Magic Doll can drive them right through a reinforced steel door.

And here's a fun fact. The creator, Sumer, used her own face as a model for the standard Magic Doll.

Seems unfair that a girl with such a cute face ended up becoming a legendary "twisted witch," hated and feared by everyone.

I feel little sorry for her.

Next we have Magic Doll -Melee-, I guess.

This girl has a stronger body then the general-purpose type. Basically, her selling point is her strength.

But in exchange, each doll is a lot more expensive… I guess that's how it goes.

Many of the owners say, "She's more unique than the other Magic Dolls, so maintenance is a hassle."

The difficulty is in the Melee type's fighting arm. Sumer used her alchemy to liquefy metals, then added magic so that her Dolls could shape the metal and cause it to become rigid in the form of any type of stabbing weapon.

The systems to operate and maintain the liquid metal is pretty complicated, even for a Magic Doll, so maintenance is key and also difficult.

Because of that and its price, it's a rare Magic Doll these days. Actually, the number in circulation was always pretty low.

Our next girl is Magic Doll -Support-, often called the Magic Doll -Support Magician- series.

The big deal here is that these were the first golems of any kind that could use magic spells.

Depending on the type of magic spells entered into the Doll, she could do just about anything.

Sure, magic is something that is indigenous to all living creatures but it should be impossible for something without a soul to accomplish. Still, Support Dolls could do it with the help of some mysterious system Sumer called the Magic Enhancer.

This was Sumer's second huge breakthrough, and in theory it could even allow a human unskilled in magic to be able to use it as well.

I'll go into detail when I get to talking about the construction process a little more, but the Magic Engine was the prototype for Sumer's final and biggest invention, the Soul System. Apparently, it resonates with the world in and around it just like any living soul does.

Hmm, maybe that doesn't make any sense to the average reader.

Later I'll try and come up with a better way to explain it, but for now I'm moving on.

With the ability to use any type of magic spell loaded into them, the Support type is handy in any situation.

In fact, this is the series you often see around, maybe even more than the general purpose type.

The only downside is that their complicated mental structure gives them all kinds of mental quirks.

Other Magic Dolls are a lot better at making decisions and reacting to the situation.

Support types drop pots; they burn food…Something like that happens every now and then.

Though I've heard some bizarre people that like these kinds of Magic Dolls just for that reason…

Oh man, it seems like I'm starting to run out of pages.

I guess I'll stop around here for now.

The next time I'd like to write about the other types of Magic Dolls that were invented after the War of the Sun and Moon started.

You can pretty much say that Fencer types and Grappler types are specifically Belfyna customs because those series were so low in numbers.

Let's call the next chapter the Lavato Biographies: Magic Dolls - Custom Types from the War of the Sun and Moon.